If you attended public schools, this is not breaking news. When I graduated from Milwaukee Public Schools in 1987, a majority of the students were black, while my teachers were mostly white women.

This column is not meant to bash white teachers. Great teachers — no matter their race — can teach to anyone, but it's also fair to ask if public schools could get better results if the teaching pools were more diverse.

It couldn't hurt, especially in Wisconsin, where the Annie E. Casey Foundation ranked African-American children last when it comes to educational and financial achievement. The report said blacks lack equal access to highly effective teachers, school leaders, safe schools and the challenging college preparatory classes.

During my 12 years at MPS, I had only two black teachers. My fourth-grade teacher, Ms. Reed, lived about six blocks from me, and it meant a lot to me when I ran into her in the neighborhood. My 10th-grade Spanish teacher, Mr. Jackson, never let me get away with being just average. He lived about a mile from my house as well.

If Ms. Reed and Mr. Jackson didn't motivate me, it would not have mattered what race they were, but the fact that they were black made them more relatable to the majority of the student population they served. They also worked hard to push students to succeed and made most of the students give their best.

Of the 3.3 million teachers in American public schools in 2012, 82% were white, 8% were Hispanic, 7% were African-American and 2% were Asian, according to a study by the National Center for Education Statistics. Meanwhile, 48% of the students in 2012 were non-white, 23% were Hispanic, 16% were black and 5% were Asian.

"We project that this fall, for the first time in American history, the majority of public school students in America will be non-white," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said.

In Milwaukee, due to our hypersegregation, there are schools where nearly all of the students are black and poor and practically the only white people at the school are the teachers and principals.

Former MPS superintendent William Andrekopoulos said when he ran the district from 2002-2010, recruiting minority teachers was a top priority because he knew that having positive African-American role models can make a difference in a child's educational endeavors.

"When you look at where some of these kids are coming from and some of their neighborhoods, the only positive role model that they may see is their teacher. That's why it was important to me to have teachers who looked like them," he said.

Recruiting minorities into teaching — especially black males — is not easy. Andrekopoulos said like most public school districts, MPS ran up against the numbers game where everyone was choosing from the same small pool of college graduates.

Only about 12% of college graduates are minority, and only a fraction of them want to teach in an urban environment. Both Andrekopoulos and outgoing Superintendent Gregory Thornton have tried recruiting at historically black colleges with some success, but Milwaukee's long winters and lack of progress have kept away a lot of recruits.

To close the urban public school gap, educators need to offer more internships to get young teachers immersed in the field; get the state to continue to invest in programs such as Teach For America; increase the starting salaries for new teachers; and forgive some of the student loans for those who teach in some of the hardest subjects such as math and science or in the schools in need of improvement.

Under the status quo, I can't see that a graduate with $80,000 in student loans would want to teach in a public school at an annual starting salary of $32,000.

Most teachers teach because they love what they do, but they also need to be able to pay back their student loans and afford the daily cost of living. As our nation continues to become more diverse, the teacher pools should reflect this change as well.

Diversity not only benefits students; it helps teachers and districts as well. It also may be the spark to help boost achievement.